Journal of Personality Assessment

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An Interpersonal Perspective on the Personality

Assessment Process

Christopher J. Hopwood

To cite this article: Christopher J. Hopwood (2010) An Interpersonal Perspective on the

Personality Assessment Process, Journal of Personality Assessment, 92:6, 471-479, DOI:
10.1080/00223891.2010.513284

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2010.513284

Published online: 15 Oct 2010.

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Journal of Personality Assessment, 92(6), 471–479, 2010
Copyright
C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0022-3891 print / 1532-7752 online
DOI: 10.1080/00223891.2010.513284

SPECIAL SERIES: Integrating Personality, Psychopathology, and Psychotherapy Using

Interpersonal Assessment

An Interpersonal Perspective on the Personality Assessment

Process
CHRISTOPHER J. HOPWOOD

Department of Psychology, Michigan State University

Many aspects of therapeutic approaches to the personality assessment process derived from or are consistent with Sullivan’s interpersonal
approach to clinical practice, but the link between such approaches and contemporary interpersonal theory remains underdeveloped. In this article,
I argue that contemporary interpersonal theory provides a valuable framework within which to conceptualize the personality assessment process.
Specifically, I argue that interpersonal models can parsimoniously represent client behavior and can facilitate discussions of assessment data with
assessees. Further, I show that hypotheses on the therapeutic mechanisms of personality assessment can be reframed in contemporary interpersonal
metatheory so that they can be compared and tested directly.

If the patient is “in touch,” if I guess correctly what is profoundly
important to him [sic] at the time, and if I express it in language that
is meaningful to him . . . I have achieved the objective of the interview
. . . not primarily my obtaining information, but the patient receiving
some durable benefit.
—Sullivan, 1954, p. 195
Personality assessors have long been interested in the clinical
value of the personality assessment process (Finn, 2007; Finn &
Tonsager, 1997; Fischer, 1985; Gorske & Smith, 2009; Handler,
1995, 2006; Purves, 2002). In addition to a number of instruc-
tive case studies (e.g., Finn, 2007; Fischer, 1985; Smith, Wolf,
Handler, & Nash, 2009), recent evidence from controlled quanti-
tative research suggests that personality assessment can promote
better therapeutic alliance and treatment retention (Ackerman,
Hilsenroth, Baity, & Blagys, 2000; Hilsenroth, Peters, & Acker-
man, 2004), enhance psychotherapy treatment outcomes (e.g.,
Jobes, Wong, Conrad, Drozd, & Neal-Walden, 2005), and de-
liver direct therapeutic benefits (Finn & Tonsager, 1992; New-
man & Greenway, 1997). In fact, in one study (Newman, 2004),
a 2-hr Therapeutic Assessment (TA) was more effective than
5 hr of individual psychotherapy for decreasing distress and
increasing self-esteem. There is also emerging evidence that
therapeutic assessment is an effective intervention with young
children and their families (Smith et al., 2009; Tharinger et
al., 2009) and in inpatient psychiatric settings (Little & Smith,
2009).
The purpose of this article is to show how contemporary in-
cess.1 Developing a clearer understanding of the interpersonal
mechanisms of personality assessment would assist clinicians
to selectively adopt demonstrably effective techniques in their
practice. Doing so would also facilitate the dissemination of
effective practice by providing clear recommendations to clini-
cians who are less familiar with therapeutic approaches to per-
sonality assessment. A clearer articulation of potentially active
mechanisms of the assessment process would furthermore guide
researchers interested in testing hypotheses regarding the clini-
cal benefits of personality assessment. More broadly, and to the
extent that the trajectories of popular psychotherapy packages
are applicable, the development of a more precise understand-
ing of the therapeutic mechanisms of assessment could promote
effective personality assessment practice to a wider audience of
health professionals and consumers.
The view that an interpersonal approach can be useful for
conceptualizing the assessment process is supported by a long
legacy linking therapeutic approaches to personality assessment
and Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal theory (Finn, 2007;
Fischer, 1985; Handler, 2005). However, many of the most sig-
nificant developments in interpersonal theory over the past 50
years (e.g., Benjamin, 1996; Horowitz, 2004; Kiesler, 1996;
Pincus, 2005; Pincus, Lukowitsky, & Wright, 2010; Wiggins,
1991; 2003) have not been integrated into the theories, practice,
or investigation of the personality assessment process. In this
1 Various terms have been used to describe therapeutic approaches to per-

terpersonal theory can help contextualize and operationalize the
concepts and mechanisms of the personality assessment pro-
Received December 1, 2009; Revised April 15, 2010.
Address correspondence to Christopher J. Hopwood, Department of Psy-
chology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824–1116; Email:
hopwood2@msu.edu
sonality assessment. Finn (2007) defined therapeutic assessment as the general
attitude among assessors that assessment might derive clinical benefit, in con-
trast to Therapeutic Assessment (TA; all capitals), which refers to his specific,
semistructured approach. I use TA as Finn (2007) defined it, but I otherwise
refer to the personality assessment process as involving personality assessment
and its potential clinical benefits. This accommodates variants of therapeutic
assessment (e.g., Fischer, 1985) and any aspects of “information-gathering”
assessment that could have therapeutic (or countertherapeutic) effects.

471
472
article, I focus on how these advances have put contemporary
interpersonal theory in a unique position to integrate multiple
perspectives on the potentially therapeutic aspects of personal-
ity assessment. In this context, I operationalize several theories
on putative factors in personality assessment in interpersonal
terms to show how interpersonal metatheory can represent a
general model within which to test specific hypotheses about
the assessment process.
CONTEMPORARY INTERPERSONAL THEORY AND THE
PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT PROCESS
There are at least four reasons why the personality assess-
ment process can be profitably construed in contemporary in-
terpersonal theory: The interpersonal model can structure the
personality assessment process, assessment occurs in a rela-
tional context, interpersonal models can structure assessment
data, and interpersonal models facilitate communication about
assessment results.
The Interpersonal Circumplex (IPC) Can Structure the
Personality Assessment Process
One of the most important post-Sullivanian developments
in interpersonal theory was the organization of interpersonal
behavior around the IPC (Leary, 1957; see Figure 1). The IPC
represents a circular configuration of the orthogonal dimensions
agency and communion. Agency refers to the tendency toward
power, mastery, and assertion of self as opposed to weakness,
failure, or submission. Communion refers to the tendency to-
ward intimacy, union, and solidarity as opposed to remoteness,
hostility, and disaffiliation. The circular properties of this model
allow for the description of specific blends of these tendencies
in addition to several other important properties of interpersonal
behavior as described following. More important, within clinical
psychology generally and personality assessment in particular,
the IPC provides a common language for inferences that can
overcome theoretical differences and allow clinicians and re-
searchers to talk to, rather than past, one another (Pincus, 2005;
Pincus et al., 2010; Wiggins, 1991). This flexibility can also
Dominance
Antagonism Extraversion
Agency
Communion Warmth
Coldness
Introversion Agreeableness
Submissiveness
FIGURE 1.—The interpersonal circumplex with trait descriptive octant labels.
HOPWOOD
serve the purpose of integratively framing hypothesized mech-
anisms of the assessment process in interpersonal theory. As a
demonstration of this flexibility, I reformulate some hypothe-
sized mechanisms of therapeutic assessment from an interper-
sonal perspective.
Finn and Tonsager (1997) proposed three therapeutic mech-
anisms of the assessment process: self-verification, self-
enhancement, and self-efficacy. Self-verification involves the
motive to “confirm that the way assessees view themselves and
the world around them is accurate” (Finn & Tonsager, 1997,
p. 382). The practice in Finn’s (1996) TA (see footnote 1) of
ordering feedback according to its likely accessibility given the
assessee’s self-concept is one example of an innovative clinical
technique guided by the desire to respect this need to self-verify.
Self-verification can be understood in interpersonal terms as the
agentic need to feel as though one knows one’s self and the
world. Assessees come to clinicians, even if damaged, with some
sense of self-worth and self-understanding that they would like
to maintain. If the initial encounter is self-verifying, the threat of
“disintegration anxiety” (Kohut, 1977) diminishes, and motives
toward self-enhancement can arise.
According to Finn and Tonsager (1997), self-enhancement in-
volves the “desire to be loved and praised by others and to think
well of ourselves” (p. 382). The existence of this motive would
appear to prescribe clinician warmth, which has three potentially
therapeutic benefits. First, warmth is likely to be directly symp-
tom relieving, particularly for distressed people who purposely
seek out human contact, as is the case with many assessees.
Second, clinician warmth can be internalized by clients who
will begin to feel warmly toward themselves (Benjamin, 1996).
Third, warm interactions can become a model for clients in
shaping the nature of future relationships or rearranging old pat-
terns in current relationships. Assessor warmth can contribute to
self-enhancement and security on the part of clients, and these
resources are likely to assist clients in managing information
emerging from the assessment that may be distressing. That is,
self-enhancement leads to a motive for increased self-efficacy.
Finn and Tonsager (1997) described self-efficacy as the need
to grow, strive, learn, and develop mastery. In personality as-
sessment, this often takes the form of incorporating new infor-
mation into existing, only partly self-verified, schemas based on
a shared understanding of assessment data. Interpersonally, this
corresponds to the agentic motive to master one’s psychological
environment and thereby one’s external environment. Overall,
Finn and Tonsager’s (1997) analysis suggests that the agentic
motives on the part of clients to self-verify and to experience
increased self-efficacy need to be balanced for TA to be effective
and that self-enhancement, facilitated by trust in and commu-
nion with the assessor, may assist in maintaining this balance.
Consistent with this formulation, Allen, Montgomery, Tubman,
Frazier, and Escovar (2003) showed that effective TA is driven
by therapeutic rapport (i.e., communion between assessor and
assessee) and an enhanced understanding of self (i.e., agency)
among assessees.
Personality Assessment Occurs in Relationships
Sullivan’s (1953) interpersonal theory asserts that humans are
generally motivated to maintain self-esteem and avoid anxiety.
The interaction of these motives imposes the need for consider-
able balance on the part of personality assessors. On one hand,
INTERPERSONAL ASSESSMENT
the assessor is compelled to help the assessee maintain self-
esteem and limit undue distress. Success in this regard may
promote the assessee’s trust and openness and facilitate the as-
sessment. On the other hand, anxiety is thought to motivate
change, including changes in the direction of greater adapta-
tion and increased self-awareness. The likelihood of therapeutic
change should therefore be enhanced when the assessor can
use test data and the clinical process to introduce and make
use of anxiety. This anxiety, then, should be both sufficiently
strong to encourage change but also sufficiently mild to main-
tain an effective and trusting relationship and to allow the as-
sessee to accept and make use of new information (Anchin
& Pincus, 2010; Evans, 1996; Kiesler, 1996; Tracey, 1993).
In Finn and Tonsager’s (1997) words, assessor behaviors that
limit client anxiety might help satisfy self-verification motives,
whereas tactfully increasing client anxiety may increase client
self-efficacy. The transition between these poles is likely to be
eased by self-enhancement on the part of the assessee. A warm,
autonomy-granting position by the assessor is likely to promote
this self-enhancement.
Specific predictive hypotheses about the effects of social in-
teraction, such as those hypothesized to be mutative in the per-
sonality assessment process, can be organized around the inter-
personal principle of complementarity (Carson, 1969; Horowitz
et al., 2006; Kiesler, 1996; Sadler & Woody, 2003; Sadler, Ethier,
Gunn, Duong, & Woody, 2009). Complementarity proposes that
interactants will generally behave similarly on communion and
dissimilarly on agency. Using this principle as a guide, the in-
terpersonal behavior of both assessors and the assessees can
be quantified, as can interactive effects between the two parties,
and these patterns can be linked to other important interpersonal
patterns in the assessee’s life. Complementarity can also be used
to predict the effects of clinicians’ behaviors.
In other words, the structure of the IPC and implications
of complementarity can be useful for conceptualizing clini-
cal interventions such as when to try to decrease as opposed
to increase client anxiety and how to facilitate movement be-
tween the goals of enhancing security and the therapeutic al-
liance and increasing anxiety to provoke therapeutic change.
Consider the example of an adult assessee who politely but
perhaps somewhat regressively asks the assessor whether he
can take a multiscale self-report questionnaire in two sittings
rather than all at once. In this scenario, the assessee may per-
ceive that the assessor holds power over him, and this request
may represent a recapitulation of his behavior with interper-
sonally dominant caregivers (Benjamin, 1993, 1996). If the as-
sessor would like to encourage his trust, the assessor should
be warm, understanding, and give him permission to complete
the questionnaire in two sittings. That is, the assessor should
complement his warm submissiveness with warm dominance.
The assessor might say “Sure, complete up to this question
now, and we will finish up next time you are here.” Issues of
standardized test administration aside,2 if the assessor com-
plies with complementarity and reinforces the relational dy-
namic initiated by the assessee, the assessor would presumably
reinforce the assessee’s internal representation of the power
2 Note that any violations of standardized administration of psychological
assessment instruments may have undesirable and often unknown consequences
for test validity. As such, standardized test administration should generally not
be violated in practice.
473
differential between them. This could be expected to enhance
the assessee’s comfort by satisfying his interpersonal goal to
receive authoritative concern, consistent with his motive for
self-verification.
However, clinical effectiveness can also be linked to the clin-
ician’s ability to use noncomplementary responses for increas-
ing client anxiety and changing client behavior (Kiesler, 1996;
Tracey, 1993). Although giving the assessee permission to take
the questionnaire in parts may increase trust, such a maneu-
ver may not be therapeutically advisable. For instance, if trust
had been sufficiently developed and if pathological submissive-
ness had been mutually identified as a core problem in the
assessee’s life, the assessor might alternatively consider asking
the assessee if it makes sense to complete the full question-
naire in one sitting or to split it up. Submissively returning
the question violates common social convention but also in-
vites the assessee to enhance his self-efficacy by experimenting
with a more assertive position. This would be anticipated to
increase the assessee’s anxiety somewhat, perhaps encourage
him to consider his behavior in light of other assessment find-
ings that suggest pathological passivity, and implicitly push him
to deviate from his typical, submissive response. If he were to
make a decision to either insist on taking only half of the ques-
tionnaire or completing the full measure in one sitting, and if
the assessor accepted his decision, it would give the assessee
some confidence that he could assert himself again, directly re-
inforcing positive behavior change. Conversely, given any dif-
ficulties making a decision, his accompanying anxiety would
illuminate how difficult assertiveness must be for him and the
need for further therapeutic exploration of this issue. Such ex-
ploration would likely be facilitated by the self-enhancement
and trust that had been garnered as a result of the assessor’s
warmth.3
The IPC Can Structure Conceptualizations of
Psychological Assessment Data
Varying associations can occur between diagnostic and in-
terpersonal data, and the IPC can provide a structure for rep-
resenting and organizing assessment findings. Some forms of
psychopathology are directly linked to specific patterns of in-
terpersonal behavior. For example, Leary (1957) asserted that
personality disorders often reflect extreme and rigid interper-
sonal behavior and that different personality disorders usu-
ally reflect different mixtures of extreme and rigid agency and
communion. This view has been supported by research show-
ing that several Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994)
personality disorders can be differentiated with interpersonal
circumplex measures (e.g., Wiggins & Pincus, 1989). How-
ever, Leary also described how some personality diagnoses
may suggest maladaptive variability in interpersonal behavior.
For example, borderline personality disorder appears to be as-
sociated with variable interpersonal functioning (Hopwood &
Morey, 2007; Russell, Moskowitz, Zuroff, Sookman, & Paris,
2007).
Alternatively, many diagnostic variables are likely to show
pathoplastic (Pincus et al., 2010; Pincus & Wright, in press)
3 Although not central to this article, aspects of the interpersonal process can
also affect test data directly (see Lord, 1950; Luft, 1953; Masling, 1956, 1959).
474
relations to the IPC. Pathoplasticity assumes that interpersonal
styles do not lead to psychopathology, but rather people with the
same diagnoses differ in terms of their interpersonal character-
istics. The orthogonality of psychopathology and interpersonal
styles suggests that the IPC may be useful for understanding
within-diagnostic heterogeneity, which can often be important
for treatment planning. For example, whereas affective traits
may largely predispose diagnostic conditions such as depres-
sion or anxiety, certain interpersonal stressors might exacerbate
symptoms of these disorders, which would themselves be ex-
pressed in a manner that is predictable by the interpersonal
context (Pincus, Lukowitsky, Wright, & Eichler, 2009). In con-
trast, other situations might limit or prevent the likelihood of
symptoms.
Finally, relations between assessment variables and the IPC
may be complex in a number of ways in the sense that varying
patterns can emerge from different interpersonal assessment
domains. For example, Pincus and Gurtman (2003) showed
how self-report and other-report data from measures of inter-
personal traits and problems instruments could augment clin-
ical conceptualization in the context of an integrative case
study of the same woman, Madeline, from multiple theoreti-
cal perspectives (Wiggins, 2003). In particular, whereas Made-
line saw herself as basically warm and dominant and hav-
ing a typical level of interpersonal problems, her partner saw
her as much colder than she saw herself and as having a
greater degree of interpersonal dysfunction. Complex patterns
can also occur in terms of relations of diagnostic constructs
to different levels of interpersonal behavior rated by the same
person. For example, Hopwood, Koonce, and Morey (2009)
presented data suggesting that people with identity problems
tend to be cold and submissive as a general interpersonal
style, but that identity problems are associated with interper-
sonal problems involving cold dominance. Such findings im-
ply the promise of interpersonal batteries consisting of IPC
measures of traits (Wiggins, 1979), problems (Alden, Wig-
gins, & Pincus, 1990), goals (Horowitz, Dryer, & Krasnoperova,
1997), values (Locke, 2000), efficacies (Locke & Sadler, 2007),
and impacts (Kiesler, Schmidt, & Wagner, 1997) that could
identify important, complex patterns in interpersonal function-
ing.
Interpersonal batteries are also well-suited to provide feed-
back in a therapeutic manner. Finn (1996) proposed that as-
sessment feedback should be ordered according to the patient’s
self-concept, a practice with some empirical support (Schroeder,
Hahn, Handler, & Nash, 1993). The self-concept could be con-
sidered in the context of the pattern of findings on IPC mea-
sures. For instance, feedback on interpersonal data might begin
by stating how the assessees see themselves (self-rated traits),
proceed to how they wish to be (values and goals), then to areas
of strength (efficacies, which are often difficult to accept and
incorporate for distressed people; cf. Finn, 2007) and problems
and finally to discrepancies between self and other views and
between various levels of interpersonal behavior (e.g., traits and
problems). Such an ordering could also be facilitated at each
level by using carefully selected examples of the subjective im-
pression of interpersonal impacts on the assessor. Given the po-
tential benefits of interpersonal assessment data for the person-
ality assessment process, the conjunctive use of IPC measures
for clinical assessment should be explored in further practice
and research.
HOPWOOD
The IPC Can Facilitate Metacommunication in
Personality Assessment
Personality assessors typically use multiple forms of data to
inform diagnostic and evaluative considerations, and those with
an eye toward potential therapeutic benefits of assessment often
frame these data in the assessee’s language. The interpersonal
model provides a clear, integrative heuristic structure within
which to organize this information (Lillie, 2007) for both the
assessor and the assessee. As such, it may have considerable
benefit in framing assessment feedback. One way to do this in-
volves the assessor presenting a picture of the IPC to assessees
and describing principles such as complementarity to them in
the context of their general interpersonal tendencies, develop-
mental patterns, and the clinical encounter. The IPC can then
become a context within which other assessment findings can
be discussed, just as researchers use the IPC as an integrative
nexus for understanding relationships among personality, psy-
chopathology, and interpersonal behavior (Pincus, 2005).
At other times it may be more prudent for assessors to sim-
ply keep the IPC in mind as they consider their experience of
the assessee and their understanding of test data. For example,
whereas presenting assessment findings as they relate to the IPC
may enhance clarity for some assessees, it may be confusing for
others. The usefulness of presenting the IPC may also depend
on the degree to which clients see their difficulties as related to
their interpersonal functioning. Finally, this decision should be
considered in the context of the interpersonal process itself. It
may not make sense to present the IPC if the clinician wishes
to avoid taking a warm and dominant position with the assessee
but prefers instead for the client to develop his or her own per-
sonal cognitive representation of their experience. Whether or
not the model itself is shared with clients, the elegant structure
of the IPC facilitates the organization of psychological test data
and thus the implementation of effective therapeutic strategies
as Lillie (2007) discussed in detail.
INTERPERSONAL METATHEORY AS A HEURISTIC
FRAMEWORK FOR CONCEPTUALIZING PERSONALITY
ASSESSMENT
Therapeutic mechanisms of the personality assessment pro-
cess have been conceptualized from multiple theoretical per-
spectives. For example, Finn and Tonsager (1997) linked the
three mechanisms described previously to variants of psycho-
analytic theory: self-verification corresponds to self psychology,
self-enhancement to object relations theory, and self-efficacy to
ego psychology. Finn (2007; see also Fischer, 1985) also argued
that it is useful “to flexibly consider a variety of theoretical per-
spectives, and then compare the different insights that result”
and to avoid “‘one-size fits all’ interpretations” in a given assess-
ment (p. 242), because theoretical pluralism has the potential to
correct for any biases that may prevent a full understanding of
important assessment issues.
The intention of this article was not to add contemporary in-
terpersonal theory to the list of potential theoretical frameworks
that could be employed in understanding the personality assess-
ment process. Instead, the contemporary interpersonal model
has the potential to represent an integrative metatheory that
can accommodate specific propositions from multiple other per-
spectives on personality assessment without losing the fidelity
of those propositions (see Andrews, 1989, for an example of the
use of interpersonal metatheory in the psychotherapy literature).
INTERPERSONAL ASSESSMENT
This potential exists because contemporary interpersonal the-
ory is generally free from the kinds of strong and specific as-
sumptions that tend to distinguish other models from one an-
other. It can therefore be employed as a metatheoretical struc-
ture with the capacity to integrate and test differences among
ostensibly incompatible theoretical perspectives that tend to em-
brace stronger and more specific assumptions. The broad heuris-
tic capabilities of contemporary interpersonal metatheory can
maintain the fidelity of more specific theoretical postulates and
corresponding predictions regarding the process of personality
assessment without requiring strong assumptions that would be
inconsistent with other theoretical perspectives. To the extent
that it can accommodate the principles of other systems without
sacrificing their specificity, contemporary interpersonal theory
can provide a language with which to concretely understand
similarities and differences across those theories. For clinicians
with a preferred theoretical orientation, interpersonal metathe-
ory could facilitate cross-theoretical communication and empir-
ical tests of theory-specific assumptions. For practitioners who
variously employ multiple perspectives on a case–by-case basis,
contemporary interpersonal metatheory could provide a foun-
dation on which to move from one theory to the next. Further-
more, the IPC and associated interpersonal propositions such
as complementarity can also be shared with clients and can be
used to articulate complex principles from other models in a
manner that is easy for nonprofessionals to understand. To il-
lustrate the metatheoretical utility of the interpersonal model,
I describe the following conceptualizations of therapeutic ap-
proaches to the personality assessment process from human-
istic psychology, control-mastery theory, and intersubjectivity
perspectives in a contemporary interpersonal metatheoretical
framework.
Humanistic Psychology
Several authors have conceptualized TA from the perspec-
tive of humanistic psychology (Dana, 1966; Finn & Tonsager,
2002; Fischer, 1985; Gorske, 2008). The overall implication of
this framework, in interpersonal terms, involves what might be
regarded as the fundamental interpersonal distinction between
information gathering and therapeutic models of assessment
(Finn & Tonsager, 1997): the assessor’s focus on controlling
the situation (and thus, the assessee) versus the assessor’s focus
on relating to the assessee in the context of shared purposes.
In information gathering assessment, the point is to gather data
that will help answer referral questions, which are often for-
mulated by third parties. The assessor is implicitly in charge,
and the assessee is expected to comply, much as would be the
case at a medical doctor’s office in which patients are not gen-
erally expected to understand their diagnosis or the procedures
by which it was obtained. In assessment cases in which as-
sessees themselves present obstacles to this goal—for example,
by yielding assessment data that are heavily influenced by re-
sponse sets—the information gathering assessor should try to
get better data from them, often by admonishing the assessees
and then readministering instruments. Given the time pressure
that often exists in psychological assessment settings, assessors
in this case may only pay cursory attention to the possibility
that a warmer and more autonomy-granting stance may lead to
more valid data or at least to an understanding of why such data
were not provided in the first place.
475
In more collaborative approaches, the baseline position of the
clinician shifts from control to one of affiliation. As described
previously, with respect to interpersonal control, the assessor
should generally complement the client’s behavior in the early
stages of the assessment to enhance self-verification and should
begin to provide less complementary control-related behavior
to enhance self-efficacy later in the assessment. In other words,
the assessor’s level of dominance or submission depends on
the assessee’s interpersonal style and interactive developments
that occur in the encounter. This shift in baseline interpersonal
orientation corresponds to a shift from an instrument-centered
to a client-centered approach. However, the link can also be
understood in terms of more specifically humanistic techniques
in personality assessment.
For instance, Finn and Tonsager (2002) discussed their de-
velopment of several techniques that they viewed as congruent
with and perhaps emanating from humanistic principles. These
include (a) ordering test feedback from that which will be most
to least acceptable to capitalize on assessee’s inner resources in
accepting and making use of the experience, (b) not insisting on
the absolute validity of test results but instead treating them as
indicating potentially useful hypotheses, (c) developing person-
ally meaningful questions for the test data prior to collecting it,
(d) regarding tests as “empathy magnifiers” rather than objective
sources of data, (e) sharing personal reactions to the encounter
with assessees, (f) bringing assessment data into the here and
now with assessment intervention sessions, and (g) generally
believing in the inner potential of humans to adapt and excel.
Each of these specific techniques can be regarded as reorienting
the assessor from an interpersonal position of dominance to a
position of warmth. Assessment intervention sessions further
highlight the utility, for both the assessor and the assessee, of
making the interpersonal process more explicit. Again, in some
cases, such sessions may be facilitated by actually presenting
the IPC and denoting the various interpersonal motivations and
maneuvers signified by test data or observed in the clinical en-
counter.
Fischer (1985) described the fundamentals of human science
as involving the recognition of uniquely human characteristics
including consciousness, purposiveness, and reflexivity. Each
of these characteristics can be represented and addressed in in-
terpersonal metatheory. In general, consciousness refers to the
degree to which a person is aware of certain features of them-
selves or their environment. This could be operationalized as
the degree of correspondence between one’s personal views and
the consensual views of others. For example, Pincus and Gurt-
man (2003), as discussed previously, described a case in which
the assessee saw herself as warmer than she was seen by her
partner and by the assessors. This apparent blind spot in her
awareness about her own interpersonal behavior and its effects
on others could be easily and directly plotted on self-report and
other-report versions of IPC measures. Purposiveness generally
indicates the capacity for people to freely make decisions based
on what is meaningful to them, and for meaning to be, in part, a
function of decisions people make. Horowitz (2004; Horowitz
et al., 2006) has discussed the place of interpersonal motives
in psychopathology extensively and has created a measure to
assess interpersonal goals (Horowitz et al., 1997). This measure
has not often been used in a treatment or assessment context, but
it has considerable potential for personality assessment, partic-
ularly in cases in which assessees seem unsure about how they
476
would like to be in relationships. Finally, reflexivity generally
refers to the degree to which people are thoughtful about their
behavior and motives and the behavior and motives of others.
The lack of reflexivity is often regarded as a major obstacle
to therapeutic success. Interpersonal measures can be used to
encourage this capacity when this appears to be an issue. For in-
stance, presenting the IPC as a guiding framework to assessees
and noting how various assessment findings relate to their inter-
personal behavior, motives, problems, goals, and the way others
see them can encourage curiosity about how their own behavior
leads to some of their difficulties.
Control Mastery
From a control-mastery perspective (Finn, 2007; Weiss,
1993), clients, typically without conscious awareness, “test”
their clinicians by presenting in such a way that gives clinicians
a choice to either reinforce or challenge their pathogenic be-
liefs. That is, clients adopt a role that they had formerly taken
in a past pathological relationship in interactions with the clin-
ician. They do so to implicitly test whether the clinician will
reenact the earlier, pathological relationship—this is why these
interchanges are referred to as “transference tests.” This pattern
closely corresponds to the interpersonal developmental princi-
ple of recapitulation (Benjamin, 1996) in which people tend
to adopt roles that were learned in past relationships and that
typically complement the behavior of early attachment figures
(Critchfield & Benjamin, 2008). When these roles were mal-
adaptive, they serve the function of extending pathology into
new, adult, relationships. The goal of the sensitive caregiver,
clinician, or assessor should be, from this perspective, to undo
the pattern by adopting an unexpected response that disconfirms
the pathogenic belief.
A second proposition of control-mastery theory is that clients
tend to treat therapists as they were treated, to test whether ther-
apists can demonstrate a more effective way of handling this
treatment. This corresponds closely to the interpersonal devel-
opmental principle of identification (Benjamin, 1996; Critch-
field & Benjamin, 2008; see also Loevinger, 1966) in which
adults do to others what was done to them in earlier relation-
ships. In control-mastery theory, it is assumed that a passed test
could model a new way of relating for the client.
Both of these tests can be represented on the IPC as involving
two sets of interpersonal schemas. Consider an assessee who
presents as cold and submissive, for example, by communicating
in some way that she doesn’t know what she is going to do about
her problems and that she doubts the assessor will be able to help
her. By the principle of complementarity, this should provoke
cold dominance on the part of the assessor, and the principle of
recapitulation would suggest that this maneuver likely reflects
a recapitulated relationship with a cold and dominant caregiver.
If the assessor were to comply with the interpersonal pull, for
example, by relating that his experience has shown he can be
helpful but only when the assessee does her fair share of the
work, he will have played into the recapitulation and failed the
test. This failed test would reinforce the client’s expectation of
cold dominance in her social environment. On the other hand, if
the assessor were to adopt a warm and dominant position, such
as empathizing with the client’s doubts and concerns, but also
gently asserting that he felt that assessment could help her, he
would pass the test. In TA terms, this position would be most
HOPWOOD
likely to capitalize on the assessee’s motives to self-verify (via
complementarity on control) and self-enhance (by introducing
warmth).
Now consider the same assessee who later takes the cold
and dominant position of former caregivers in a “passive-to-
active” test. Several sessions into an assessment, she may declare
that she has some real doubts about the assessor’s ability to
help her in any meaningful way. This remark, according to
complementarity, should pull the assessor in the direction of
cold submissiveness. He may, based on this comment, begin to
doubt himself and relay this doubt to her, explicitly (e.g., “Hmm,
maybe I should rethink my approach”) or otherwise (by an
awkward pause or defensive transition). Such a reaction would
support her stated concerns that he wouldn’t be able to help her,
but more important, from a control-mastery perspective, it would
reinforce the cold and submissive strategy that she learned in
her early relationships, given that this is the same strategy her
clinician has now adopted. However, if the assessor were able
to accurately perceive this comment as a test, he could provide a
corrective, warm, and dominant (anticomplementary) response.
For instance, he could say that he shares the assessee’s focus of
helping her in a way that is really meaningful to her and believes
that together they can do this and that he would be interested
in whether she felt that some of his interpretations of the data
seem inconsistent with the way she sees herself. This reaction
would gently challenge the client’s assertion that the assessment
was not going to help her, but more important provide her with
a model for how she could manage this relational pattern in
future relationships as well as a deeper understanding of her
tendency to identify with caregivers from previous pathological
relationships.
Both of these tests highlight the importance of warm attune-
ment on the part of clinicians in the service of “reading between
the lines” of client communications (Pincus & Cain, 2008).
They also demonstrate the value of a simple heuristic tool that
can help organize process-level data. The test behavior of the
client as well as the pathology-reinforcing and corrective re-
sponse options for the clinician can easily be plotted on the IPC.
Internalization of the IPC by clinicians can facilitate more rapid
and appropriate responding in the here and now because the
common organizational metric makes it is easier to anticipate
both assessees’ tests as well as what responses will most likely
be therapeutically beneficial.
Intersubjectivity
It is not difficult to identify parallels between interpersonal
theory and a third theoretical perspective that has been em-
ployed by therapeutic assessors (e.g., Finn, 2007): intersubjec-
tivity (Stolorow, Atwood, & Brandchaft, 1994). As in Sullivan’s
interpersonal model, this approach asserts that psychological
constructs cannot be meaningfully separated from interpersonal
systems because psychological processes manifest in interper-
sonal situations. Also, like Sullivan, intersubjectivity insists that
clinicians represent participants, rather than objective observers,
and that the meaning of interpersonal situations is subject to per-
ceptual distortions, so that each person is likely to have a slightly
different take on the same interaction.
Finn (2007) described one implication of intersubjectivity for
the personality assessment process as involving the need to go
beyond client and therapist individual influences on their own
INTERPERSONAL ASSESSMENT
behavior to more fully appreciate their interaction. Again, the
convergence with interpersonal theory is obvious. Sadler and
Woody (2003) conducted a sophisticated study on complemen-
tarity in which dyads worked together to describe a fictional
person based on that person’s responses to five Thematic Ap-
perception Test (Murray, 1943) cards. Sadler and Woody found
that, for both agency and communion, the influences of each
person’s trait levels and of the other persons’ interpersonal pulls
were roughly similar. That is, both interpersonal traits and in-
terpersonal situations influence social behavior in essentially
equivalent and meaningful ways.
The implications of intersubjectivity for the personality as-
sessment process can be reframed in contemporary interpersonal
terms. For example, Finn (2007) stated that referral questions
that involve both the person’s behavior and the context in which
it is most likely to manifest are more useful than those that
request a static assessment, such as a diagnostic label. Interper-
sonal assessment facilitates the description of a person’s general
interpersonal tendencies, but complementarity and developmen-
tal principles of identification, recapitulation, and introjection
(Benjamin, 1996) also indicate the contexts in which such prob-
lematic behaviors are most likely to manifest. For example, if
a patient was deemed by assessment data to be inclined toward
controlling others, this would also suggest that this inclination
could become problematic in cases where others were domi-
nant, in which case a power struggle may ensue. Conversely,
in cases where others were submissive, the patient’s controlling
behavior could become excessive or even abusive.
Summary
Its capacity to account for principles from diverse theoretical
perspectives is perhaps the single most important strength of the
interpersonal model. Contemporary interpersonal theory in gen-
eral, and the IPC in particular, represents a tool that is specific
enough to make predictions about behavior and indicate the de-
velopmental and social influences on a person’s personality but
general enough to accommodate other theories that are, at least
in part, philosophically incompatible with one another. Finn
(2007) argued that different clients may be more or less effec-
tively described by different theoretical models. However, these
theories are themselves different at the level of irreconcilable
(but often testable) philosophical assumptions. For example, hu-
manistic psychologists might argue that not all clients try to test
their clinicians, as is proposed by control-mastery theory, and in-
tersubjectivists might argue that all people do not have a natural
tendency toward growth as proposed by humanistic psycholo-
gists but rather grow as a function of the match between their
own goals and environmental constraints. Contemporary inter-
personal theory takes no sides on these issues but rather serves
as a metatheoretical model that could accommodate the specific
predictions that emanate from each perspective (Horowitz et
al., 2006; Pincus, 2005). Furthermore, interpersonal metatheory
represents a practical framework for testing assumptive differ-
ence across these theories.
CONCLUSION
Contemporary interpersonal theory has significant potential
as a framework within which to explore the personality assess-
ment process, refine the clinical process for personality asses-
sors, and integrate multiple theoretical approaches to technical
477
aspects of personality assessment. Beyond sharing a philosophi-
cal forefather, contemporary interpersonal theory and therapeu-
tic approaches to personality assessment have much to learn
and benefit from one another. At the most concrete level, inter-
personal assessment measures have considerable potential for
personality assessment that should be explored in future clin-
ical practice and empirical research. The clinical process of
personality assessment can also be understood in interpersonal
terms, and doing so allows assessors and researchers to draw
on evidence from the psychotherapy literature showing the ef-
fects of particular interpersonal patterns on clinical outcomes
(e.g., Binder & Strupp, 1997). Patterns identified in psychother-
apy research also appear to link to the putative mechanisms
of personality assessment as an intervention. Furthermore, as-
sessment data can be effectively organized in an interpersonal
framework, reducing the cognitive burden of multivariate as-
sessment for both clinician and client. Interpersonal considera-
tions can also help organize feedback strategies (Lillie, 2007).
Finally, contemporary interpersonal theory represents an ele-
gant and economical heuristic metatheory within which more
circumscribed and specific approaches to the practice of person-
ality assessment can be integrated and proposed techniques of
the assessment process can be tested.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This article is loosely based on a talk given at the March
2009 Society for Personality Assessment conference in Chicago,
Illinois. I thank Dan Blonigen, Steve Finn, Les Morey, Aaron
Pincus, Kate Thomas, and Aidan Wright for their helpful com-
ments on earlier drafts of this article.
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